A single-storey commercial building along the 500-block of Pandora Avenue could be replaced to make way for a lowrise residential and retail project. The existing single-storey building is home to Mo:Le Restaurant, the original location of Habit Coffee, Cafe Bliss, Cavity Curiosity Shop and The Vorpal Gnome.

It has decent storefronts (which a new building should be able & required to do as well or better), and it has some funky character (which cannot be replaced), but seriously, come on. So many legitimate treasures have been lost over the decades and some are on the chopping block as we speak, and so we fret about this place.

It's more-so directed at the potential loss of Cavity and Volpar Gnome (the latter I had never heard of prior to this proposal coming forward). The undertones in that discussion have more or less devolved into yuppies destroying Victoria, condos = bad, etc.

MoLe, Habitat and Cafe Bliss are likely to re-establish themselves within the new building.

jonny likes this

Know it all.Citified.ca is Victoria's most comprehensive research resource for new-build homes and commercial spaces.

The only negative is the destruction of an Old Town commercial incubator, a low-rent space for start-ups and quirky retail. There are other places to relocate but increasingly they are on the outer fringes of town. There are good and bad aspects to gentrification. I liked the fringe flavor of those units even though the building itself is underdeveloped and unremarkable.

zoomer and Coreyburger like this

"[Randall's] aesthetic poll was more accurate than his political acumen"

The only negative is the destruction of an Old Town commercial incubator, a low-rent space for start-ups and quirky retail. There are other places to relocate but increasingly they are on the outer fringes of town. There are good and bad aspects to gentrification. I liked the fringe flavor of those units even though the building itself is underdeveloped and unremarkable.

"Getting the funk out of town". The Johnson St. side of the Duck's Block project will be doing more of the same. You can't build brand new funk, it's true. But, like jonny says, you can redistribute the businesses to other funky spaces. As long as such spaces still exist somewhere.

It's funny, if Centennial Square had never happened there would be a lifetime's worth of funky spaces sitting right there. In the 1960s it was all just so much despicable blight, but if it had been left to ripen for another 50 years it would be funky/quirky anti-gentrification medicine today.

I quite like these little islands of old, funky buildings. This top half of this Pandora block works well just as it is, and these little business fit just perfectly.

I'm not looking for ultra new, super clean and hip-modern when i pop into Habit for a cup of coffee.

Tearing every old Victoria building down in order to replace it with a faux "old-town" construct will only result in the entire city looking like the Uptown Mall ... a facility that often creeps me out, as it reminds me of the ultra phony town of Seahaven in Jim Carrey's - "The Truman Show".

Tearing every old Victoria building down in order to replace it with a faux "old-town" construct will only result in the entire city looking like the Uptown Mall ... a facility that often creeps me out, as it reminds me of the ultra phony town of Seahaven in Jim Carrey's - "The Truman Show".

Seahaven is a real town, but it's called Seaside and is in Florida. There are a bunch of these faux-heritage "New Urban" towns and developments around the US and Canada, with Seaside, FL and Celebration, FL being the most well known. Better for your sanity if you stay away from them, it seems!